The proliferation of wireless-enabled laptops has created demand for wireless networks in the home. Consumers can purchase wireless routers (or access points) at electronics stores and add them to their existing ISP connection to create their own wireless access to broadband networks.
Transmissions between a laptop and an access point are typically unsecured. These transmissions often happen in clear-text, and a malicious user with limited skill can a) snoop on the conversation that is occurring between the laptop and the network and b) gain access to the network and resources on the internet. Fortunately, most routers and access points have the ability to enable wireless security. In doing so, a secret password is shared between all devices that want to communicate with the access point.
By default, typically, such devices ship with wireless security disabled. The act of enabling wireless security on these devices is challenging and complex to the average home user.
Wireless security is a complex field. There are many different types of wireless security available, such as WEP, WPA, WPA-PSK, WPA-RADIUS, WPA2, that often involve complex ‘hexadecimal keys’ or pass-phrases and sub-choices of encryption methods (TKIP/AES, etc). The method of securing a wireless network involves configuring the desired security settings inside the router and then configuring each wireless client with the same settings and pass-phrases.
To further complicate things, each device requiring configuration may have a very different user experience. For example, the router may have a difficult-to-navigate web-based administration console, different versions of Windows have different user interfaces, a Mac in the home would require a different approach, and finally “headless devices” that don't have a display console, such as a network enabled web-camera or networked Digital Video Recorder, may have yet a very different user interface.
Some efforts have been made by the industry to improve on the simplification of wireless network security. For example, the Microsoft Corporation has developed an approach known as “Windows Connect Now” (WCN) that allows wireless security configuration information to be stored in an XML file on removable storage devices such as USB keys. The Wi-Fi Alliance has been driving a set of standards around wireless configuration known as Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS).
However, the current industry efforts fall short in a number of areas. For example, the WPS wizards in Windows XP and Vista may allow for creation of new network settings onto a USB key. This helps with wireless clients that support the key format, but it does not help users reconfigure their existing router settings to match. This is a complex task that users often do not know how to complete. Additionally, there are no standard APIs to program routers. Most of them support a web-based administrative interface, but not a well structured API set. Moreover, WPS is hindered by many conflicting ways of accomplishing the same goal (e.g., PIN based configuration, Push-Button configuration etc.)
Once wireless security has been configured and enabled on a network, the task of adding a new device to that network is also complex; as it requires client configuration of the same settings. In many cases, a new device is added to the network a considerable amount of time after the network was originally secured, in which case the settings have been long forgotten.